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World Day against Child Labor

World Day against Child Labor
Published On: 29-May-2021
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A nation can produce efficient and productive human resource through the investments it makes in its young ones in terms of ensuring good health, providing education and employment opportunities, and fulfilling their basic human rights. The fundamental human rights of all citizens are guaranteed by the Constitution of Pakistan as well as by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR). There is an additional framework specifically addressing the needs of children under the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1990. It designates a protected time until 18 years of age for all children worldwide to thrive peacefully. Unfortunately, all children do not enjoy a financially stable and physically secure childhood due to the menace of child labor.

Child labor is one of the worst forms of human exploitation and social injustice which interferes with the health and normal social and educational development of a child. The International Labor Organization (ILO) launched 12th June as the World Day against child labor in 2002 to recognize the hardships faced by child workers. This day is observed in hundred countries globally. A unanimous resolution of the UN adopted in 2019 marked the year 2021 as the international year for fulfilling Sustainable Development Goal 8.7, that is, the eradication of child labor till 2025. Besides, the ILO Conventions, the Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138) and the Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention, 1999 (No. 182) also serve as institutional deterrents against child labor. Pakistan is also signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labor.

Children enter the workforce due to various reasons. These can be social inequities, economic vulnerabilities, loss, or disability of one or both parents, kidnapping, trafficking etc. Children who work as laborers are deprived of the joys of a normal childhood. They are burdened by financial responsibilities and social injustices from a very tender age. Such children do not have access to adequate health facilities, opportunities of education and the security of a decent job in future. Child labor is also symbolic of transgenerational poverty.

According to the report Global estimates of child labor: Results and trends, 2012- 2016, published by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 2017, some 152 million children constituted the child labor force. This labor force constitutes child workers aged between 5 and 17 years who work in the domestic setup and in the services and industrial sectors. 73 million of these children work in hazardous fields. The largest percentages of child labor are in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific region, respectively. The report also reveals that this labor force comprises 58% boys and 42% girls.

         During the pandemic, poverty levels have increased due to business shutdowns, reduced trade and remittances, migration, border closures and falling health and living standards. The ILO and UNICEF have collaborated to produce a report COVID 19 and child labor: A time of crisis, a time to act (2020). The report predicts that the pandemic can increase child labor significantly and reverse the success of the last two decades which reduced child labor by 94 million. The South Asian region is also likely to suffer from an increase in child labor as families find ways to cope with the socioeconomic challenges, school closures and diminishing family incomes.

         The solution to this is an integration of various approaches catering to the specific socioeconomic needs of a country. Pakistani policy makers should be vigilant and foresighted to devise and implement laws which increase employment for poor adults, safeguard vulnerable child workers and ensure that the pandemic does not deteriorate their already low standard of life and health and educational opportunities. 

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